April 13, 2010

Laser cutters are all the rage right now. Prices have come down quite a bit over the past 10 years but they are still not nice and cheap so it would still be a purchase that would hurt a bit. Interestingly there are lots of people who are making DIY CNC machines but not that many making DIY Laser Cutters and DIY Laser Engravers. Have a look at this DIY Laser Cutter build that is ongoing over at BuildLog.Net. The goal is to build a DIY laser cutter for around $1000. If you are thinking of making your own use this site as a resource since the design is open source and all of the drawings are available on the site.

“I want to approach this in a very serialized manner to prevent wasting excess money or time. The design should be very scalable to more powerful lasers. I will start with the lowest power laser as a proof of concept. I have built several successful CNC routers from scratch so I feel confident on the mechanics. The laser issues will all be new. There is a lot of mystery on the Chinese parts. I will try to fill in all I can along the way.”